The Orlando Initiative dreams of becoming a Christian organization where Christians can truly mature and receive hope and restoration for their lives. For now, we operate from a place where hope is very often absent. We are hosted in a mobile home park in the midst of one of the most devastated neighborhoods of Orlando, Florida, where we have a resource center and a small chapel. This sector of the Holden Heights neighborhood on Orange Blossom Trail has been ruled and isolated for decades with children and adults suffering abandonment and deprivation. There is alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, the highest crime rates in the City, un-employment and the ensuing hopelessness of those victimized by their environment. Our target group is the adults and children who live in this dilapidated mobile home park, the last stop before homelessness.
With one of our partners, Campus Crusade for Christ, we have launched an after-school curriculum for first through third graders through their Here’s Life Inner City children’s program called S.A.Y.YES. Every Wednesday children come to learn about our Savior, Jesus Christ and mature in their spiritual walk with the Lord. We are always recruiting volunteers who are offered quality training by Campus Crusade. More and more volunteers are being equipped in order to expand our program to multiple days a week.
Several local and out-of-state churches and ministries bring in work groups for our project. With this team effort, we are helping to improve the living environment by cleaning the mobile home park, painting their homes and making small repairs. We agree with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that states that “basic biological and physical needs have to be addressed before we can capture peoples’ attention,” to come alongside in their context and establish relationships.
With our growing network of dedicated and caring volunteers we offer several quality services such as basic computer assistance for employment research, creating letters and résumés, executing applications for food stamps, social security and unemployment. We offer counseling, pastoral care, prayer support and spiritual development for gender groups and have developed listings of numerous services in the community-at-large to function as a referral agency for the tenants in the park.
We are researching ways to bring in beneficial activities that will help overcome the dull living environment for the children and provide areas for fun such as a basketball court and playground. This will open new doors for Big Brothers and Sisters from the Orlando community to volunteer and help the children grow into healthy and productive residents with a more promising future and outlook on life.
In the future, The Orlando Initiative envisions having our own property where we can focus more on the ever-growing homeless community. We realize that the definition of “homeless” has changed in recent days due to financial setbacks and, with these changes; people from a varied strata of society have now been forced into homeless living.
One of our goals is to offer transitional housing for people who truly desire to better themselves. In the first phase of the program (12-18 months), people would live in small modular homes with the condition they would go through intensive training, including life-management and skills, leadership development, celebrate recovery and employment training seminars. We are praying, networking and talking to local business people for land and funds for the property and these homes.
As the ministry grows, the second phase would include apartments to be built for the graduates of the first phase and they would be trained to become part of the leadership. This would be after leading them into a mature spiritual walk. The qualifying candidates would be free of destructive behaviors and have proven to be financially responsible for at least one year.
The third and last phase would have a number of apartments to be sold to residents who have a proven walk with Christ for three to four years. As the number of new home owners increases, the intensity of God’s Light in the regeneration of souls will become a beacon of hope to the homeless in Orlando.